Puck the Vampire Slayer
by dress without sleeves
Summary: It's just like Glee, except with vampires. Welcome to the Hellmouth/the Road to Sectionals. Puck discovers he is the Vampire slayer, suspects glee to literally be the root of all evil, and realizes that Rachel wants to eat his best friend. P/R


**Author's Notes:** Um. Okay. So, this fic got kind of out of controlled. Initially inspired by becca_radcgg, it was supposed to just be a funny little one-shot about Puck being Buffy and Rachel being a vampire.

But then, um, it turned into this epic season-spanning AU about Puck being Buffy and Rachel being a vampire and all sorts of other things. So, this is just part one, and part 2 won't be out until after the rest of season 1 ends and we all know what happens, so consider this a one-shot for now and then be pleasantly (I hope?) surprised when part 2 comes out this summer.

Anyway, I'm sorry for simultaneously raping Buffy and Glee, but I hope you like it, anyway.

Puck the Vampire Slayer

**Part One: Welcome to the Hellmouth - The Road to Sectionals**

_For as long as there have been vampires, there has been the Slayer. One girl in all the world, a Chosen One… This world is older than any of you know, and contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as a paradise. For untold eons, demons walked the Earth, made it their home, their Hell. In time, they lost their purchase on this reality, and the way was made for mortal animals. For Man. What remains of the Old Ones are vestiges: certain magics, certain creatures. - Rupert Giles_

_The world started as a bucket of crap, and with the exception of myself and a saxophone-playing gentleman I met last year named Sergio, it's stayed that way. You have to go around and clean the shit off the world, Puckerman. You'll probably fail and you'll probably die, but if you do, I still get my bonus cheque, so don't think you'll get any pity from me. Play your own damn violin. - Sue Sylvester_

—

Puck thought the whole slaying-vampires-thing was sort of lame until he got to stab one in the heart and it totally exploded into dust. Then he decided that this whole gig was fucking _awesome _and that he should have his own TV series. (They could call it "Puck the Vampire Slayer". He would play the part of himself, a high school sophomore with a far too heavy burden on his shoulders and a pack of quirky but lovable friends who try to help him carry the weight. There should, at some point, definitely be a lesbian.) It sucked having to wear a star of David necklace the time, but he figured, hey, don't throw the baby out with the bath-water, or whatever.

Only in this case, it was don't throw out the totally badass killing creatures of the night with the stupid jewelry.

—

Puck finds out that he's the most important person in the world the fall of sophomore year. He tries out for the football team because soccer is for queers, and after practice the cheerleading coach asks to see him in her office.

Puck doesn't bother to change out of his uniform, because he looks damn good strutting down the halls in those tight ass pants.

Coach Sylvester is sitting at her desk when Puck walks in, and without warning she pulls a knife out of nowhere and hurls it at his face.

Everything sort of slows down, and Puck takes a moment to think, WTF, Coach Sylvester kills people? before he just automatically reaches up and snatches the knife out of the air before it cuts up his (let's be honest) perfect face.

"What the fuck, Coach Sylvester?" he hears himself shout, and then feels like a badass because he said fuck to a teacher. "Did you just throw a knife at my face?"

She shrugs and rolls up the sleeve of her obnoxiously bright yellow jumpsuit. "You get one dumbshit question a month, Puckerman," she tells him flatly. "Are you sure you want that to be it? Now sit," she adds without waiting for him to answer.

He suddenly understands why most of the Cheerios cry after practice.

Coach Sylvester's eyes rake over him as he sits, and he sort of feels like he's being felt up and sized up at the same time. "Well," she says after a pause, "at least you aren't a girl or a child. I hate girls and children."

"Then why are you a cheerleading coach?" he asks, holding the knife she threw at him a little more tightly than was probably necessary.

"Why did Benedict Arnold sell out the American rebels?" she replies, like this at all answers his question. Coach Sylvester leans forward, her hands steepled in front of her face, and looks him squarely in the eye. "I'm gonna be straight with you, Puckerman. You've been put on this earth to devote yourself to the killing of evil, which includes vampires, werewolves, and kindergarten teachers, and which you'll undoubtedly suck at. If and when you die a terrible, slow death, I'll offer my tutelage to the next slayer and forget all about you like you were a diamond bracelet I fed to a shark on my sixteenth birthday."

Puck feels a little dizzy. He thinks he might be sick, and that Mr. Figgins had to have been drunk when he hired this woman. "Um, what?" he asks weakly.

She reaches into her desk drawer and pulls out a necklace with the Star of David and tosses it to him. "Wear this," she demands, ignoring his question completely. "Walk home and try not to die when you're attacked by things that want to eat you. If you survive the night, we'll begin our training tomorrow."

He stares at her until she looks up from her journal and raises an eyebrow. "What, are you still here? Do you have written permission to be in my presence for more than ten minutes? Then get out."

She's got crazy eyes and apparently a thing for knives and sharks, so Puck does the smart thing and gets the hell out.

He keeps right on thinking she's crazy until Donny Feldman, a senior, leaps out of the bushes with a face that looks like a blind retard sculpted it and teeth the length of his middle finger. He thinks that he needs something wood to stab him with, but all he has is Coach Sylvester's knife, so he does what Jaime Lee Curtis was too stupid to do in the original _Halloween_ and cuts Donny's head off with it.

Donny's body just stands there bleeding, and then Puck whirls around because he can feel something coming at him. He catches the thick wooden stake that a hand from the bushes throws him and then keeps on turning, which turns out to be the right move because he feels the stake slide into something hard and thick and then suddenly Rebecca Knowles is exploding into ash all over him.

"What the fuck," he says dumbly. "I'm fucking _Bat_man."

Coach Sylvester steps out of the shadows, slow clapping. "All right, Puckerman, you're not as bad as contracting Syphilis on a backpacking trip across Africa," she declares. "See me tomorrow in the gym after school."

Puck grins.

—

It's kind of hard to hide from Finn, because Finn is like a giant fucking puppy that wants to be loved and petted all the time. Coach Sylvester makes him join the football team so that he can explain the bruises he's suddenly getting when she whoops his _ass_ at training.

Puck would be embarrassed by the fact that he gets destroyed every after noon by a middle-aged girl, but he's fairly certain that Coach Sylvester is actually a dude, and also possibly not human.

Anyway, so Finn is always offering him rides home with his mom and shit, so Puck has to lie and say that he's secretly fucking Santana Lopez after practice. Then it only makes sense to _actually_ fuck Santana Lopez after practice, and she's enough of a bitch to actually like that he basically hates her, so somehow they end up in a relationship together. Which sucks for Puck's reputation of never dating anyone, but helps when he has to make up shit about where he's been and why he's suddenly hanging out with Sue Sylvester.

"Dude," he says, wincing as he pulls his backpack on because yesterday Coach Sylvester leaped out at him from the gym rafters like some freak spider monkey and nailed him on the shoulder with a pool stick, "that bitch is _crazy_ about her cheerleaders, she's like some creepy ass Nazi mother hen."

"Yeah," Finn says, smiling cheerfully. "She got all robocop on me when I started dating Quinn, too."

Of course, the downside is that now Puck knows all this shit that he would have been totally happier not knowing, like the entirety of the Book of Revelations, _way_ too much Latin, and because Coach Sylvester is seriously a freak, the entire end scene from _Dirty Dancing._

On the other hand, he gets a totally legitimate excuse to throw slushies on people. It was a finely honed technique that Coach Sylvester taught him the first week of training. If they lick their lips, they're human. If they freak out and run to the bathroom, they could still be human, but you should kill them just in case.

There is some advice from Coach Sylvester that Puck ignores, because she really doesn't have a problem with what she "collateral damage" and he calls "a waste of energy".

Which is why he refuses to kill that Spanish teacher that keeps trying to be Robin Williams in _Dead Poets Society_ when he restarts the glee club.

"That monstrosity has been an embarrassment to vampire slaying since its conception," Coach Sylvester spits at him, pacing back and forth across her office like it's the deck of the _Titanic_ and she's Leonardo DiCaprio.

"Uh, why?" Puck pants, folding up into his ten billionth crunch of the morning.

"Did I ask you to question my authority?" she snaps, throwing her magic 8 ball at him from her desk. "Don't bother speaking, I already know the answer, which is no. I did not ask you to question my authority just like I did not ask Kim Jong-il to steal my copy of _The Outsiders _the last time I was in North Korea."

Puck shakes the magic 8 ball and flops onto his back. "So this is some girl named Kim's fault," he concludes.

"You're unforgivably stupid," she replies in monotone. "Since the beginning of time, dark creatures have used glee clubs as ways to meet and network with one another. It took me ten years to dissemble the last one through blackmail, perjury, and no small amount of larceny. It is the perfect cover. Be definition, 'glee' means opening yourself up to joy. Who would suspect a bunch of low-man dancing freaks to turn into dark creatures?"

"Anyone who's seen _High School Musical_," Puck mutters, and then coughs into his hand. "Not, that, you know. I have. Or anything."

Coach Sylvester looks away. "Me either," she says, and they both start whistling, which is weird.

Two days later, Puck finds out that women don't have prostates and that Finn has joined glee club. He's still not sold on Coach Sylvester's Glee-As-Evil theory, but he's not quite willing to bet Finn's life on it, so he does everything he can to peer pressure him into quitting.

As a general rule, Finn's basically a pussy when it comes to standing up for himself, so when he goes all Defender of the Weak and stays put, Puck realizes that he needs to do something drastic.

There is definitely, he decides after their first rehearsal, something _weird_ about Howard Bamboo.

Coach Sylvester nearly pees herself laughing when he tells her that he's joining glee, or at least, she assures him that he does, because her facial expression doesn't change.

"It's like I'm going undercover," he says, and she lights up one of her cigars and offers one to him even though you're not allowed to smoke in school and he's technically not allowed to smoke at all.

"Well," she says, "that's not any worse an idea than the time Castro tried to feel me up at a diplomat's ball."

Which Puck takes as a yes.

—

So, the Quinn thing.

It's actually less awful than he remembers it later; Quinn is upset because suddenly Finn is turning into the blonde one on Queer Eye, and shows up at his house with some wine coolers. They hang out in his truck, since his Mom is home, and afterwards he's drunk so he offers to walk her home.

They get ambushed by some creepy forty-year-old vampires halfway there and Puck is pretty sure that both of them are dead until suddenly there's two streaks of red coming out of nowhere and taking care of business.

He watches in sort of a daze until it's over and Quinn is just sitting on the grass crying. It takes him a moment to process the fact that Santana and Brittany are standing over him, dusting themselves off.

The fact that Santana kills things as an after school job doesn't come as much of a surprise, although he'd always imagined that it would be puppies and kittens instead of creepy evil things but whatever.

Even in his drunken state, however, seeing Brittany holding a knife makes him uncomfortable.

"The hell?" he slurs, trying to uncross his eyes.

"You're such a stupid motherfucker," Santana tells him flatly, rolling her eyes. "Jesus. If Coach Sylvester hadn't told us to follow you around, you'd be dead like Michael Jackson right now."

She sounds smug, which makes him a little bitter, but. He's willing to overlook it.

"Hi, Puck!" Brittany trills. "Wasn't that cool? It's magic. I like magic. And hobbits. They're so little."

Somehow they make it back to Quinn's, and she clings onto him and cries some more and then suddenly they're kissing and everything feels like a dream.

When he wakes up, his Slayer powers punish him heartily for getting drunk, and he stumbles home.

—

Puck is on graveyard duty when he first realizes that root of all evil or no, there is definitely something weird about the glee kids. For one thing, Tina Cohen-Chang, aka the usually silent stutterer who basically pees herself in fear whenever Berry so much as glances at her, is holding a seance over the grave of some nobody that Puck was sort of expecting to come back craving blood.

"Uh, Tina?" he asks, using her first name because _Cohen-Chang_ takes way too much energy. "What the fuck are you doing?"

She screams and knocks over one of her candles, accidentally lighting the bottom of her robe on fire. Puck stamps it out. "What am _I_ doing?!" she shrieks. "What are _you_ doing?!"

_I am a bamf who kills shit_ seems like not the best way to get her to calm down, so he says, "I was taking a shortcut home."

Tina coughs. "Oh. I was. Um. D-d-definitely not practicing m-magic, because that would — that — that would be weird."

Puck puts his hand casually in his pocket and fingers the knife he has there, hoping that he's not going to have to kill her, because that shit would be hard to explain.

"What's with the candles?" He nods at her little setup. "Are you … like … meeting someone?"

Tina's eyes get really wide as she realizes what he means, and she starts stuttering frantically. "I-I d-d-don't, I don't, w-what are you t-trying to — "

He relaxes a little, slouching back into his jacket, but keeps his fingers on the knife, just in case. "Dude, chill. I won't tell. Who is it?"

Just then, the no-name douche in the grave Tina's sitting on thrusts his hand up and starts clawing his way back into the world. Puck doesn't think, he just shoves Tina out of the way and grabs the guy by his jacket, burying the stake he keeps stashed in the back of his jeans into his heart.

Tina's hands cover her mouth when he pulls back, dusting himself off because that shit gets _everywhere_, it's like that fucking glitter crap Sarah puts on _every single one_ of her school projects. When he turns to look at Tina, she's busy brushing dead guy out of her hair.

"That was _way_ more effective than my method," she notes, spitting off to the side and making a face.

Puck's jaw drops. "You're not freaking out?"

"Come on," Tina grumbles, bending down to blow out her remaining candles. "The chances of dying of some weird, 'PCP-related accident' in this town is like the chance of Miley Cyrus making another pop album that's weird and creepy because it was written by her father."

For whatever reason, his brain refuses to process what he's hearing, so the only thing he can think to ask is, "What happened to your stutter?"

"Oh, yeah, that's fake," she says matter-of-factly. "I've been trying to make myself less threatening and noticeable. The more noticeable you are around here, the higher chance you have of dying young in horrible ways. Plus, I figured it would help me get out of public speaking. I hate public speaking."

"Then why the _fuck_ would you join the glee club?"

She shrugs as she finishes packing her back and hoists it onto her shoulder. "Same reason as you. Everyone knows that glee clubs have historically been a cesspool of evil. Keep your enemies close. There's something _very_ suspicious about Finn Hudson. I mean, the jock with the heart of gold? What are we, some Fox Channel serial about accepting yourself? _Please_."

Puck stiffens. "Leave Finn alone, he's a retard, not evil," he snaps, and falls into step beside her.

As it turns out, Tina Cohen-Chang is way cooler and just as weird as he thought she was. She's been a practicing Wiccan since the age of twelve, when her cousin "overdosed on PCP and went around draining people of their blood". She comes out to the graveyards sometimes to try and head the undead off at the pass, though she's more than happy to pass that duty off to Puck, who, she says, is _way_ more impressive than the last Slayer, which he's stoked about until she tells him that the last Slayer was a tiny gay kid from McArthur who played the tuba.

He drops her off at her house, and at her stoop she smiles at him. "Well, thanks for tonight," she says, like this is some weird Wiccan date or something. "See you tomorrow." Then she goes inside like this is a totally normal night for her.

"Oh my _God_, if you tap that goth freak, seriously, I will _never_ have sex with you again," a voice says from the bushes, and Puck leaps about a foot in the air and comes down with his knife in one hand and a stake in the other.

Brittany and Santana emerge on either side of him, Santana rolling her eyes and Brittany closely examining a lock of her own hair.

"_Jesus_," he hisses, "what the fuck, do you guys just follow me around all day?"

Brittany smiles widely. "Yep," she says cheerfully. "Me and Santana follow you around and when you're doing boring things we make out. Or sometimes I play Boggle on my phone. Stop. Pots. Tops. Opts. See? I'm really good."

Puck stares at her and Santana rolls her eyes almost fondly. "You're such a dumb bitch," she says, reaching over to link their hands.

"You make out?" Puck repeats, honing on the only important information he's gathered. "Really? Prove it. Do it right now."

"Go fuck yourself, Puckerman," Santana snaps back boredly. "Come on, Britt. I've got to get you home before your parents realize you're gone."

"Gone," Brittany answers. "Onge. Noge. Enog. Geno."

"Those aren't words," Santana says softly, and they disappear back into the darkness.

—

When he finds out Quinn is pregnant, the first person he tells is Coach Sylvester. She spends training that day just blatantly beating his ass. There's not a whole lot of teaching involved.

"_Now_ where am I supposed to get a team captain?" she snarls at him. "All right. Listen. My friend Mahmoud taught me a valuable lesson while I was in Iran last year for their annual celebration of my birthday. When things get ugly, all you have to do is deny, deny, deny."

He rubs at his stomach, where he's pretty sure a bruise is forming. There is no _way_ Coach Sylvester is human, like seriously, he can _not_ be getting this badly beaten by a woman that old.

"That won't make it go away," he tells her, and takes a moment to congratulate himself on his maturity. Lima loser his ass, he thinks. Fuck Quinn Fabray, anyway, he's the _Vampire Slayer_, goddamn it. It's not _his_ fault he has to do dumb shit like slushy people in the face.

Okay, that part he sort of enjoys, but that's not the point.

"Prove it in the next ten seconds," Coach Sylvester says. "That's what I thought. Now, Santana told me that you were hanging out with the girl Asian from that devil infested club a few weeks ago."

"Turns out she's a Wiccan," he says. "She's been helping with some of the graveyard shifts and stuff. Plus she, like, reads, or whatever. So. Sometimes she actually knows what's going on and I don't have to just rely on my badassness." He gives her a meaningful look and Coach Sylvester buffs her nails on her jumpsuit.

"I could help you out more, I suppose," she says thoughtfully, "but, let's be honest with each other. I won't. I can't spare any more time for you, Puckerman. It would take out of the time I set aside for my own purposes. Don't be so selfish."

—

Pretty much everyone realizes that April Rhodes is evil the second she walks through the McKinley high doors, but no one really does anything about it. Puck knows she's evil because as soon as she arrives, everyone starts being nice to everyone else, which just isn't natural.

Mr. Schuester is already out of his head obsessed with her, and the rest of the student body are quick to follow. Kurt falls first, probably because he's gay, although Puck's not sure exactly why that would have an effect. Then Mike and Matt, who both swear up and down that she gives the best headders ever. Finn's a boy scout, so he's a little more hesitant to get down and dirty, but Santana and Brittany are goners as soon as she starts singing.

Quinn's just enough of a bitch to love her for making Rachel miserable and Tina's a sucker for a shoplifter, so pretty soon the last two sane people in the club are Artie and Puck.

There's a weird moment in the shower where there are a _lot_ of dudes and only one April and Puck is sort of into it for a moment before he's like, wait, _way_ two many dongs here for this to be okay.

Later, during their final rehearsal before the big show, Artie wheels up to him and mutters, "Am I the only one that hates her?"

Puck's realized that Artie has this weird way of making everything sound super-important, which he thinks would make him a good president.

"I'm pretty sure she's evil," he says casually, and Artie nods.

"Yeah," he muses, "I think I actually prefer Rachel, scary as that is."

In his head, Puck hears: _Yes. I must now choose the lesser of two evils, though both paths lead to darkness._

"Speaking of evil," Puck mutters.

After the first performance, Puck finds her feeding on Mr. Schuester in the hallway. He's not sure exactly how she's doing it, but he thinks it might have something to do with the way she looks at people, so he comes up behinds her and cuts off her head. When he's not sure what type of evil something is, beheading is his go-to method, because it's basically a win-win.

Mr. Schuester is in some weird sort of trance, so Puck drags off the body before the Robin Williams wannabe can see her and flip out. Of course, that means he accidentally gets blood on his shirt, but luckily there's a spare in the music room.

Santana's pissed at him for a few days for killing the '_one_ evil thing in this town I could really enjoy', but the glee kids go back to being assholes, so Puck puts it in the win category.

—

The moment he swallows Finn's energy pills, Puck converts to Coach Sylvester's idea that the Schuesters are trying to take over the world. If this is what Terri Shuester feels like every day, there is no way she's _not_ trying to kill everyone, because Puck feels like he could just run through shit and have no idea, and he's _destined_ to be one of the good guys.

When he asks Mrs. Schuester where he can get a pack of his own, she smiles with her crazy eyes and says, "Howard Bamboo buys them for me. You can get them from him."

That night he never goes home: he stays in the graveyard all night and when he runs out of vampires to kill he starts picking off squirrels by pelting them with acorns.

He never liked squirrels, anyway.

The next day, Tina tackles him on his way to his truck and talks at a thousand miles a minute about how she learned a new spell and wants to try it out and on his way home Santana and Brittany drop out of a tree and land in the bed of his truck. They're both bug-eyed and he's pretty sure that they spend the night in his backyard, based on the number of dead squirrels he finds in the morning.

The good news is that it means that Coach Sylvester becomes co-chair of glee club, and she's in such a good mood about it that she actually lets him get sort of close to actually scoring a win during training.

He's in such a good mood that he actually asks to switch onto her team in a show of support for her "destroy Mr. Schuester" campaign. Brittany comes with him because apparently he can't go anywhere without one of them following him around, but Brittany's hot and weirdly good with knives, so, whatever.

Looking back, though, he probably should have guessed that letting Coach Sylvester out of her cage was going to turn to shit. Sometimes he forgets that she's basically the nicest evil thing out there, and that just because she doesn't suck blood doesn't mean that she doesn't suck blood, so to speak.

When Rachel storms out, Puck feels a surge of camaraderie sweep through him and he follows her, carrying Artie with Mike and Matt because the poor fucker can't wheel himself out. Outside, the glee kids stand together in an awkward silence because none of them can really stomach being nice to each other but they've all sort of admitted with the walk out that they're okay with this weird group family thing, so.

"I just want to thank you guys for carrying me out," Artie says, and it's enough to everyone to start talking and being friendly again, because it comes out like: _come together, right now, over me._

—

Also, later that night, but Puck totally takes out six vampires at once without bleeding once. It's no big deal or anything, but actually, it just proves that he's a _bad ass mother fucker_ and that evil can suck a dick.

—

This is weird, but when Puck dreams that Berry climbs through his window, he suddenly realizes that it was entirely possible that it _wasn't_ a dream, because Rachel Berry has a talent for appearing and disappearing at will.

And it hits him that Rachel could be a hot vampire, and the Good Lord wants him to get into her pants.

"Aw, man," he grumbles as he gets dressed, really fucking annoyed that he might have to kill their only real chance at actually doing well in Sectionals. And how gay is it that this kind of shit is starting to matter to him?

At school, he brings her a slushy, and he's not sure what stills his hand when he is about to throw it on her, but suddenly he just… doesn't _want_ to know if she's evil or not, because if she is, than it totally fucks up his only chance of getting Finn to break up with Quinn.

Yeah, okay, whatever, so he sort of likes the blonde bitch. She's his baby mama, what do you expect?

Anyway, so instead of throwing it on her face and waiting to see if she's definitely human or only maybe human, he hands it to her and hears himself asking her if she wants to work on mash-ups later.

It's in that second that he realizes that he's totally planning on making out with Rachel Berry and seeing what she's got going on under those short skirts and knee socks.

He never _officially_ sees her drink the slushy, but he decides to assume that she does since it disappears before he talks to her again. She watches him out of the corner of her eye all day, and he chooses to believe that the look on her face is curiosity and not a weird sort of predatory thing.

When he gets to her house, they both keep their distance, Puck staying on the bed and Rachel singing into a tooth brush.

The next thing he knows, she's climbing on him like he's a jungle gym, her mouth … oddly forceful, hands and teeth everywhere … wait, teeth?

She pulls away sharply, breathing heavily, and scrambles off him. He brings his hand to his neck and feels the harsh lines where her teeth scraped him. "Aw, _damnit_, Berry. This coulda been awesome. We are two _good-looking_ Jews."

Her hands flutter around her vamped out face as she gestures meaninglessly. "I can't do this," she mumbles. "I can't … turn someone who isn't brave enough to even sing a _solo_. If you don't have the guts to do that then — then how are you going to be bold enough to deal with the ups and downs of eternally loving an admittedly high-maintenance girl like me?"

Puck pushes himself up off the bed, shifting around in his backpack for his stake. "You wanted to _turn_ me?" he asks, not a little pissed. If anyone fucked up his face like what happens when people vamp out, he would seriously go Rambo on them. "Are you questioning my badassness? Have you _seen_ my guns?"

"Yes, they're lovely," she murmurs, clasping her hands behind her back. She raises her eyes to finally meet his. "I can't … I can't hurt you, Noah," she whispers. "You're far too important to the aesthetic of the group."

He looks down at the stake in his hand and hesitates. "I can't kill you if you don't even fight back," he argues. "Come on, Berry, take a swing. You know you want to."

She draws back, jaw dropping. "I do _not_!" she hisses. "A lady does not engage in _violence_. Do you think I need that sort of thing on my record, just _waiting_ for the tabloids to dig up?"

"Yeah, not to mention that whole ... drinks blood thing."

"Don't be vulgar," she snaps, crossing her arms over her chest. It does nice things to her boobs.

Puck studies her. "You actually care about glee, don't you," he realizes.

"Of course I do! Just because my diet has changed doesn't mean that my dreams have," she retorts bitterly. "And now that digital cameras can capture our image, I don't have to give them up."

"So you're a hot vampire that's not into eating people?"

She wrinkles her nose. "I was a vegetarian _before_ Jacob Israel unleashed his disgusting self on me, and I'll be one long after," she informs him primly. "Now please remove that weapon from my home."

He leaves by the window by force of habit, and spends all night trying to figure out a way to get the message across that he's not going to kill her — yet — but that doesn't mean that he's forgotten she's a vampire and that ultimately he'll probably be forced to turn her into glitter ashes that will, knowing Berry, end up just being an explosion of little gold stars.

So he sings a solo during practice, and this huge smile blooms across her face, and he realizes suddenly that he is in deep, _deep_ shit.

Berry holds him back after glee, and he can see Santana and Brittany hovering outside the door, so he grabs her and pulls her mouth to his. Startled, she sinks into it, and when they come up for air his bodyguards are gone.

"We can't do this," she murmurs.

"Why not?" he demands. "So long as you stick to not eating people, I can stick to not killing you."

"I wish you wouldn't phrase it that way, Noah," she murmurs, pouting a little.

He laughs and kisses her again.

Coach Sylvester is going to kill him if she ever finds out.

—

Luckily, nobody has much time to worry about Puck's love life when it turns out that the entire hockey team has been possessed by some weird computer demon.

He can't officially confirm it until Tina gets back from the library and drops some knowledge, so he has to take it like a man when they slushy him in the face. Apparently they are looking for the Slayer, who they know will automatically react to the force of their evil and try to take them out. But Rachel… that is, Berry's hand stays supernaturally firm on his arm when he starts toward the ringleader, and she drags him to the bathroom.

They have an oddly tender moment that he knows he's going to regret later, but when she's sitting on his lap he can't bring himself to remind her that eventually he's going to have to kill her.

"I'm sorry about the slushies," he says sincerely.

She smiles, looking down at her hands. "It's okay."

"No. It's not." He says something half-joking about wanting to cry, and instead of telling him he's an ass, she gets it, that he's half-serious, too, and squeezes his hand. "You know I have to kill them," he murmurs, keeping his eyes on her boobs because they're easier to objectify and not feel guilty about. "Because they're evil."

She shifts her wait and leans back a little, studying him. "And me, some day, too," she realizes, "which means we probably can't be together anymore."

"I'm sorry," he says again, and she does nothing but lean in close and kiss his forehead. "I feel like such a bad Jew."

She shakes her head and leaves him there staring at himself in the mirror, which would be weird except he wouldn't have seen her reflection, anyway.

—

It's kind of embarrassing that after he takes on half of the hockey team he gets ambushed and has to get saved by Brittany and Santana doing their Wonder Twins thing, but he doesn't really mind when they take a tally and he still took out more than they did.

"Well, sometimes you don't _totally_ fail," Santana admits grudgingly. "But most of the time you do, and we still had to save your dumbshit ass, so don't get comfortable."

"Frotablemoc, baletordcom, mocforbatle," Brittany adds.

"Still not words," Santana tells her, almost gently, and when Puck looks away to spit out blood, they ninja out of sight.

"Fuck you both," he says loudly, knowing they're probably just lurking in the shadows like usual. An empty juice box hits him in the head.

The fight makes him late for glee, and when he walks in, Rachel breaks free of the group and hugs him, even though he totally dumped her earlier. "Are you sure?" she asks quietly. "Even though you could face … _slushies_ … every day?"

She's not really talking about slushies, and for once he understands that, and he smiles when he says, "Bring it."

—

On Monday everyone's freaking out about how the whole hockey team was high on PCP and died over the weekend, and Puck exchanges a look with Tina that he's learning to understand means _DUMB, _or something to that effect.

"The whole team?" Quinn breathes, her hand to her mouth. "That seems…"

"Weird," Finn supplies. "Yeah."

Mr. Schuester nods sadly. "It's just another example of what happens when you let drugs into your life," he tells them all wisely. "Terri told me that she saw them hanging out at Sheets And Things all the time, and that they tried to attack Howard Bamboo the last time they were there. Guys, please. I just can't say this enough. Don't do PCP."

Santana covers her laugh with a cough, and Brittany's a dumb shit so she actually hands her a lozenge.

—

Tina is waiting in his truck the day after the bake sale, which he's learned is just her standard operating procedure.

"You're a huge freak, you know that," he tells her, getting in and turning on the radio.

"Sure," she answers. "Listen. I told Artie."

He freezes for a moment and then shouts, "You _told Artie_?!"

"Well, it started out as just telling him about my stutter being fake, but then he was really angry and I didn't want him to be, so… I told him the whole thing to make him understand that I'm not crazy."

"You told him you were a witch to make him thing that you _weren't_ crazy? Have you been talking to Berry, because you should know better than to listen to anything she says."

"He believed me. He didn't buy that bull PCP story either."

Puck rubs his face with his hands. "You do get that my identity is supposed to be a _secret_, right?"

She shrugs. "Yeah, sorry. Okay, well, I just wanted to tell you. See you tomorrow."

When Artie's Dad's car is waiting in his driveway, Puck decides that he hates Tina, no matter how much those reading skills of hers help him.

"So, you … kill evil things to keep people safe?" Artie asks, after they've settled down for some Oreos and his dad is in the other room talking shop with Puck's mom. (_So, your path destroys the darkness to bring the people light?_)

"Yeah, basically," Puck says.

"I have to admit. You aren't exactly who'd I'd have imagined doing this." (_There are those who are born great, those who chose greatness, and those who have greatness thrust upon them._)

Puck shrugs, twisting apart an Oreo to lick the icing from the middle. "I know. But Finn would get his ass kicked. He legit couldn't kill a fly if it bit him first."

"Point," Artie concedes. "All right. You've convinced me." (_You cannot fight Destiny._) "So… do you think Tina thinks that I can't use my penis just because my legs are paralyzed?"

There's really no conceivable way that sentence could ever sound cool.

—

Having to quit football so that he can stay undercover in glee kind of sucks, and Puck would have bitched about not being able to have a real life to Coach Sylvester but he knows that she just frankly won't give a shit. He can already hear her in his head: _You think dedicating yourself to the killing of evil is hard? Try living with tongues for hands, that's hard!_

Still, he can't help himself from hanging out on the bleachers and watching practice every once in a while.

"Do you miss it?"

Rachel's voice is quiet and sad, and he already knows what's coming. "Hell no," he tells her flatly, his voice hard. "I have a job to do and I'm going to do it."

She raises her eyebrow but doesn't say anything until, "I hope you didn't choose glee over football because of me."

He doesn't look at her. "Why?"

"Because … I don't think this relationship is going to work out."

"It's Finn, right?" He wants to laugh. "He's never going to leave Quinn, not with that baby in her belly." He pauses meaningfully and shoots her a glare. "And I'm never going to let you turn him."

"Is that why you joined?" she asks, and when the wind blows through her hair he picks up the smell of apples. "To protect him?"

All of a sudden he can see his entire life stretched out before him: stuck in Lima, hanging out with Coach Sylvester, and visiting graveyards at night. He'll never get married, he'll never have kids. The only person that could possibly understand what he does is Tina, and he's just not into that half-Asian goth nerd action.

"Like I said," he tells her quietly, "I'm never going to let you touch him."

They sit in silence for a while.

—

Finn doesn't know it, but he's almost killed three times the week that Mr. Schuester assigns them to sing ballads. Puck's getting tired of following him around just to make sure that whatever is drawing all the evil to him doesn't make his best friend wind up a blood sucker.

He's getting really good at fighting more than one vamp at a time, but Coach Sylvester still takes him out every day and beats the shit out of him. He's decided that once he beats her, he can't show mercy, and for the good of the world he'll have to kill her. Another Watcher will be assigned to him, just like another Slayer will take his place when he dies. It's really best all around if Coach Sylvester eats it.

But she seems to sense his plan, because she's extra hard on him, and repeatedly hits him over the head with her tennis shoe, which she somehow manages to get off and tie to the end of one of her walking sticks to use like a mace.

Rachel walks into the gym as Coach Sylvester is taking a swing and leaps at her unthinkingly, vamping out like you wouldn't believe. Puck barely manages to pry her off.

Coach Sylvester screams like a banshee and orders Puck to attack like he's some sort of guard dog, but he puts himself between them and says, "Dude, Coach. Chill. It's okay."

"Puckerman," Coach says flatly, "Are you as retarded as I already think that you are? This relationship is not a democracy. You'll do what I say or I will bring the full power of my armed guard on you."

"I could take Santana and Brittany if I had to," he tells her. He doesn't look at RAchel when he says, "She's not evil. She's a freak vampire, okay. She doesn't even drink blood."

Coach Sylvester sniffs. "Well. I suppose you can have one pet if you have your heart set on it. But if either of you sets one toe out of line, I'll put you both down like Air Bud after the cameras stopped rolling."

When she leaves, Rachel blushes and doesn't look at him. "I'm sorry. I thought …"

"You're such a freak," he tells her fondly. He thinks she looks weirdly pretty in this light.

He's not really thinking about it as he leans in, but she doesn't pull away. Their mouths are very close, but not touching, and she murmurs, "I'm very confused, because I still have strong feelings of attraction for Finn, and this relationship goes against every thing rule of the universe that I can think of. I'm not sure how much of that is the desire for his admittedly sweet-smelling blood or … this."

He laughs, kissing her, and says, "I love it when you talk dirty."

"I don't under—"

"Shut up, Berry. Seriously. Just shut up and let the universe deal with it."

—

"So … why have you been hanging out with Rachel so much?"

Finn is sitting in his living room, and they're eating potato chips and salsa. Sarah has a horde of annoying ten-year-olds up in her room and they're making more noise than all the glee kids together.

Puck flounders for a second. He's not really sure how to tell Finn that a large part of Rachel's wanting him has to do with wanting to drain him of blood and keep him around forever, so he covers with: "She's been teaching me how to hit that high D or whatever. She's weirdly scary when she wants to be so I sort of just do what she says."

Finn laughs and nods, obviously relieved, and Puck feels a pang of annoyance, because it's not fair that he gets to call dibs on Quinn _and_ Rachel, even though he's clearly just keeping one in the dugout or on the bench or whatever, choose your sports metaphor.

Of course, that makes Puck the waterboy that's gotten with both of them, so he guesses he doesn't really have the right to complain.

Finn spends the night and they stay up late playing Halo 3 and Puck realizes that he's actually kind of missed doing this, although fake-killing aliens isn't nearly as fun as real-killing vampires. Also, Finn has terrible technique, so he gets his ass kicked.

But he can't exactly share that information, so he let's it slide.

—

Something weird comes over Rachel during the ballad assignment. She forgets about Puck, and even Finn, and is suddenly fawning all over Mr. Schuester like he's announcing who won this year's Tony.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" he asks, cornering her outside Lima's annual blood drive, where she's stealing blood. He helps her load some into her Prius.

She has a dazed expression about her as she shrugs. "I love him," she says matter-of-factly. "I can't help it. He's … beautiful, Puck."

It seems like the psycho kind of thing that Rachel would do, but Puck doesn't buy it, so he follows her home and watches her go into the Schuesters'. He chooses to believe it's not creepy that he hangs out in the hedges and watches through the window as Mrs. Schuester invites her in and sets her to work cleaning.

That's _definitely_ not Rachel-esque, so he drives home and calls Tina.

"I think Rachel's possessed," he says without bothering with hello.

"You're just now catching on?" Tina responds blandly. "Hold on, I'm microwaving soup." She actually _puts him on hold_ for a couple minutes, and by the time she's returned Puck has had time to draw a mustache on all of Sarah's school pictures. "Okay," she says by way of greeting, "So I personally think that something has been seriously off about her since the first day those dads of hers dropped her off at tap lessons or whatever, but recently she's been crazy even for her. I personally think that the only explanation is that Mr. Schuester is the root of all the evil here at the Hellmouth, but I'll look into it."

She hangs up without saying goodbye, and Puck starts liking her a little bit again. Three hours later she sends him a text message that says:

_it's definitely mama schuester, kill her_

...which really puts a downer on his weekend.

—

As it turns out, Mrs. Schuester isn't _actually_ Mrs. Schuester, which makes his job both easier and more difficult. The real Mrs. Schuester is tied up to a pole in the basement of Sheets And Things, but she's been kept unconscious for the past few days while the shape shifter thing took her place.

According to Tina, the shape shifter thing is a giant bug that poses as a teacher in order to seduce students. Apparently the praying mantis-esque monster thought that Mrs. Schuester was the educator in the family, so has been luring young girls to _Mr. _Schuester instead.

Puck leaves the real Mrs. Schuester asleep in his truck as he speeds all the way back to the house. Rachel's on her hands and knees scrubbing the toilet, and the bug Mrs. Schuester is hovering in the doorway, casually peeling off her skin and transforming into a giant, _fugly_ praying mantis.

Puck throws a hatchet through the window and pins the bug lady to the wall. Rachel looks up, startled, but doesn't scream when she sees the new Mrs. Schuester. Puck cuts off its head quickly and then Rachel helps him shove the body out the window.

He ducks into the hedges when Mr. Schuester comes in and offers to drive Rachel home, and once they leave he wakes up Mrs. Schuester.

She blinks blearily at him. "Where am I?" she asks, touching her head. "The last thing I remember is telling Howard to close up."

"I saw you faint outside of Sheets And Things," he lies smoothly, helping her to her feet. "Maybe it's a pregnant thing. You're pregnant, right? You look pregnant."

She shoots him a glare that could kill puppies and stalks back into the house, slamming the door behind her.

"God, that harpy sucks like Coach Sylvester when she hasn't had her morning steak," Santana says from a tree branch above him.

"Seriously, how do you guys keep up with a _car_?"

Brittany giggles. "Arc," she says. "Rac. No, wait, _rac_ has a silent _ph_ at the end."

Santana shakes her head and sighs.

—

When Quinn asks him to babysit with her, he's not stupid. He knows exactly what she means. At first he says, no, because he's not like some Ken doll she gets to play with whenever she wants to, but on his way home from school he happens across Howard Bamboo at the 7/11, and he asks if Quinn is having fun babysitting Terri Schuester monster nephews.

The word _monster_ kind of freaks him out, and although he knows that they're probably just kids, you can never be too safe. Besides, that's his daughter that Quinn's carrying, so he heads over to the house.

She smiles widely when she opens the door and lets him in.

He gets a text from Santana halfway through dinner. _Where R U?_

_babysitting, go away_

_we're bored, wanna go hunt stuff?_

_can't_

_but i'm wearing my lucky hunting underwear_

_whats that mean_

_i'm not wearing any_

He _knows_ this is going to come to bite him in the ass, but. He keeps it anyway. Can you blame him, really?

On the way home, he takes pity and lets himself get ambushed by a pair of Texan brothers that talk like they're from _Gone With the Wind_ and let Brittany and Santana save him.

—

Later, when Quinn shoves his phone in his face and asks what he was doing, he thinks through two sets of answers and chooses the one that sucks less.

It's better, he decides, that she thinks he's an asshole that doesn't care about her or the baby than she thinks he's an insane sociopath who thinks he kills monsters for a living.

He says _better_, but maybe he just means _easier_.

—

So, yearbook photos are a huge deal for Coach Sylvester. She lobbies to get her one with him, Santana, and Brittany for the 'Slayer Club', but as usual Principle Figgins has no idea what she's talking about and doesn't want to spend the extra money. Puck isn't too disappointed, because he doesn't feel like explaining what creepy kind of club has Santana, Brittany, and him as the only members.

"Did you really have your tear ducts removed?" he asks in training that day. She's in an all black sweat suit that looks like a fake tuxedo.

"Of course not, don't be retarded," she snaps, throwing a dart at him. "I wasn't born with any."

—

After Matt tells him the story about the girl who got knifed after having it drawn in the yearbook, Puck asks Tina to look into it. There's always been something weird and sketch about yearbook photos, and he wouldn't put it past Lima's fucked up citizenship to take it to a whole new level.

Which is why he gets kind of freaked out that Rachel is so determined to have her picture there.

"This is a terrible plan," he tells her flatly as she hungrily watches Finn play football and he carefully keeps his hand on his stake. He doesn't want to have to kill her, but he will if she makes a wrong move.

"No, it's not," she answers calmly. "Don't let superstition cloud your judgment, Noah. You can't afford it in your line of work, and I can't afford it in mine."

Two hours later, she tells him bitterly that Finn clearly isn't strong enough to love her for eternity, since he couldn't even stand up to his football buddies to be in the yearbook photo with her. "Maybe I'll just drain him and leave him there," she mutters, and Puck pins her up against the wall so fast she doesn't have time to react.

"I know you're mad," he says, "but if you touch him, I'm not kidding, Rachel, I _will_ kill you."

Her eyes get very soft and she frees a hand to bring it up to cup his face. "You're actually a very sweet boy, when you let yourself be," she tells him, and smiles, the anger melting out of her. "But you know that I wouldn't do that. He's by far the strongest voice in glee, and without an impressive male lead, I can't shine as brightly as I have to if I ever want to break into the business."

He wants nothing more than to lean in and kiss the crazy out of her, but instead he steps back and shoves his stake back into his pocket. "Don't touch Quinn, either," he says softly, and walks away.

On his way to his truck, Santana and Brittany materialize on either side of him. "So you've got a thing for Man Hands, huh," Santana says without introduction. "That's a whole new level of gross, even for you."

"Shut up," Puck snaps. "Seriously, Lopez, I'll fucking kill you."

Brittany laces her fingers with his. "No you won't," she says happily, a little skip in her step. "Then who will tap your phone when you're at football practice?"

He looks at Santana, alarmed, but she just buffs her nails on her shirt and smiles.

—

He kills a bunch of stuff that night, just to work off the energy he's got burning through him.

—

At school the next day, Quinn tells everyone that she's gotten them a full page in the yearbook. He's confused until Coach Sylvester starts talking about how much Quinn reminds her of the year she spent as the head of Military Operations in Iraq in 2000.

He catches up with Quinn in the library, leaving his books with Tina and Artie. "Impressive shit you pulled with Coach Sylvester," he notes, keeping his voice low. "She's scary as shit when she wants to be."

Quinn shrugs, but there's a little smile at the edges of her mouth. "Not to me."

She looks up and meets his eyes, and he realizes that they're very close together. He smiles as his nose brushes hers and then he pulls away. When he looks up, Rachel is standing in the shadow, half-hidden by a bookshelf. Brittany and Santana are leaning casually on the other side, pretending to look at books, but Brittany's etching her name into the wood with her favorite knife.

He wonders how the hell he got himself into this mess.

—

"The baby's yours, isn't it," Rachel demands the second he leaves the library. They're all going to Mattress Land to film a commercial and Tina's gotten a ride with Artie's Dad so that they can keep researching.

She says 'researching', Puck says 'making out'. But whatever.

He shrugs her off and heads over to his truck. She gets in without being invited. "Quinn's baby," she says again. "You're the father."

He shrugs, shoving the keys into the ignition and following Kurt's car out of the parking lot. "Yes," he tells her simply, and keeps his eyes on the road.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because it's none of your business."

Rachel shifts in her seat so that she's staring right at him and folds her arms over her chest. "None of my _business_? This changes _everything_, Noah! Finn isn't the father! That introduces a whole new dynamic into our relationship, not to mention _our_ relationship, and—"

He tries to figure out whether or not Rachel's feelings about Finn had effected his decision not to tell her, and then decides not to care. "That doesn't matter," he interrupts flatly. "You still can't have him, I don't care who jizzed in her pants."

When they pull into the parking lot at Mattress Land, her jaw is stiff and she's not speaking, which is weird, for her. "Look," he says, locking the door when she tries to climb out. "I know how badly you want someone to be with you for eternity, or whatever." He's talking too softly, too tenderly for his comfort, but Rachel has a way of bringing out the worst in him. "I mean, I don't blame you, I'd be lonely too if all I had was Jacob Israel for comfort, that guy's a freak."

He makes her meet his eyes. "But you _can't. have. Finn._"

She glares at him until he unlocks the door and then gets out without saying anything.

—

When Mercedes is singing "And I'm Telling You", Puck is pretty sure that he sees Santana crying. He _knows_ that he sees Kurt crying, but that guy cried at the end of _The Breakfast Club_, too, so that's not exactly impressive.

The good news is that there's no curse on the glee club photograph; just Coach Sylvester.

"Oh, yeah, I had my last Slayer kill that girl," she says casually, shrugging. "How many times do I have to tell you, Puckerman? Glee is a _cesspool of evil._ What did you think I had that Bamboo character take the picture _for_? Posterity?"

When he asks Santana about it she looks at him with hate in her eyes and says, "What do you think I was, hatched? I was like, a baby when that girl died."

He pictures a little baby Santana unleashing her wrath against evil and shudders. "I wouldn't put it past you," he mutters.

They walk to glee together, Brittany harmlessly rattling off her personal Boggle versions of their conversation, and when they get to glee the first thing that happens is that Finn punches him in the face.

Somebody screams and out of the corner of his eye he sees Tina tackle Santana and Artie grab Brittany before they can whip out a can of whoop ass. Puck keeps his hands to himself, because he's really not sure that he wouldn't accidentally end up killing Finn if he actually fought back back, so he pretends that Finn's Coach Sylvester and takes it like a man.

Quinn screams and Puck thinks he sees Rachel's hands cover her mouth, and dimly a part of him thinks _serves you right_.

When Mr. Schue pulls Finn off him, he closes his eyes and takes a few seconds to breathe. Finn's voice is ragged and rough as he shouts, "Don't play dumb, you're too _dumb_ to play dumb!"

A lot of things go through Puck's mind, like: _you should talk,_ and _you have no _idea_ what I gave up for you._

But Puck's sort of starting to realize that that's what Coach Sylvester "forgot" to mention the first day that she pulled him into her office to talk: the only real requirement for this job is to give things up all the time. That's what the real bath water is, from that stupid saying — it's not the jewelry and dust on his clothes and the regular beatings by Coach Sylvester. It's the look on Finn's face, right now, and the unbearable weight of his best friend _not knowing_.

He's not even sure that they're best friends anymore, because how can they be if Finn doesn't know anything about him, if Finn doesn't know that he's not the same retard he was at the beginning of the year — he's a whole new kind of retard, the kind that does dangerous shit without getting paid for it just because some tranny in a sweat suit told him he was destined to.

There's not a whole lot he can say, so he lets Quinn handle it, and turns to look at Rachel. She refuses to meet his eyes, and he can see a vein in her cheek pulsing, her whole body wanting to vamp out like it does when she's upset.

After Finn storms out, he doesn't speak to anybody. He gives Quinn a long look and she shakes her head, so he leaves out the side door and walks home. He knows Santana and Brittany are following him, and he tries not to let it make him feel better.

But it does, a little.

—

She shows up at his bedroom window that night before he goes on graveyard duty. He doesn't invite her in, so she's stuck shivering outside. "I'm sorry," she says, and her voice is trembling.

He … really doesn't care.

"Good for you," he says, voice tight. "I'm on duty in the next ten minutes, and if you're still around I'll have to kill you."

"Noah," she tries, urgently, "Please understand — "

"I told you that you _couldn't have him_, Rachel," he snaps, whirling to face her, stake itching in his hand. "I wasn't kidding. You still can't."

"I'm not going to _turn_ him!" she cries, and her hands flutter up uselessly around her face. "I just — I'm _confused_ and — and it wasn't fair that you couldn't tell anybody it was yours when you so _obviously_ want to, and — and I want him to be happy, too, can't you see that, can't you see how unfair it was?"

Puck grabs her by the sweater vest and drags her close, pressing the stake against her neck. "Don't tell _me_ about unfair," he snarls. "I don't know what I've been thinking, keeping you alive."

"I do," she murmurs, leaning into him. "I've been thinking it too."

He pushes her away from him and walks back to the dresser. "Get out of here, Rachel. Don't make me call for Santana, 'cause she hasn't killed in a while and it makes her twitchy."

He keeps his back to her, and after a few moments, he turns around and she's gone.

—

He drops by Finn's house on his way back from graveyard duty. Quinn's still living there, which Puck thinks is kind of awkward, but she's been sleeping on the couch, so when he sneaks in he doesn't have to wake anyone up.

She's dead asleep, snoring a little, but she's clutching the stupid teddy bear that Finn bought her a few days after he found out about the baby like it's a lifeboat. She'd told him that she wanted to do it on her own, looked him right in the eye and chose Finn again, even though Finn didn't want her anymore.

He stands and looks at her for a couple of minutes before picking up the small cross that she always takes off when she sleeps and dips it in the little bottle of holy water that he carries around and says a blessing over it.

Then he replaces it on the table and lets himself out. It's not _I love you_, because he's not sure that he does, and it's not _I'm sorry_, because he's not sure that he is, but it's everything at a distance, which is the best he can do in real life, anyway.

—

It sort of rounds off his week as a nice, steaming pile of shit when they realize that the other teams are doing their numbers.

Rachel keeps trying to talk to him, but Santana and Brittany have this weird guard dog thing going on, which Puck is pretty sure is just their way of working out their frustration with the other teams and not killing anybody. Personally, Puck's at his wit's end just trying not to rip Jacob Israel's head off, particularly with the possessive way he keeps looking at Rachel, like she's his just because he turned her.

When Rachel stands up, Puck's halfway out of his seat with his hand in his pocket in case she's about to vamp out and kill everyone in the room, but she meets his eyes and shouts, "_Meeting in the Green Room, five minutes!_"

And suddenly it feels like fixing this, fixing glee, will fix everything else, like if they can just win _here_ then maybe everything will be good for a while.

But Puck's not all that good at fixing things, not counting pools, and let's be honest, he only got into that for the cougars and the easy access to peoples' houses when they went crazy and started killing stuff.

So he's as glad as everyone else when Finn sweeps in and does his Hero of Time bit, saving the day in the only way people care about. Puck's gotten good at not being jealous of Finn. He thinks of them more like a team: Puck goes out at night and does the badass Van Helsing bit, and then Finn steps in during the day and turns their lives into an ABC Family Special.

And frankly, he thinks, as Rachel's whole face lights up and Quinn softens and he looks down at the sheet music in his hand, you just can't always get what you want.

—

He's like, weirdly nervous before Rachel goes on, so to calm him down Tina punches him on the shoulder and murmurs, "Good news — the soloist from the reform school just totally vamped out and ate a member of the audience."

He excuses himself to "use the bathroom", and Kurt grabs his arm before he goes and hisses, "If you're late and ruin this, I will reach levels of Diva anger that you have never before _imagined_."

He just grins and jogs out into the lobby, bumping into Howard Bamboo on the way. He says he's come to videotape the performance for Mrs. Schuester so she can try and win over Mr. Schuester, which is a whole lot of drama that Puck is just not interested in.

The reform school soloist is on a spree and people are all freaking out, but she's kind of fat so Puck doesn't have much trouble catching up with her. It's quick business, and he's dusting himself off when he slips back into line and walks out to the sound of Rachel belting out some gay musical tune he's never heard before.

Brittany smiles at him and Tina brushes a little bit of ash off his shoulder as they step into the bright headlights.

—

Mrs. Pillsbury offers to drive Mr. Schuester's car home, which is probably for the best since Finn admits to almost killing at least three cats on his way here.

Puck sits in the middle, next to Matt and Mike, and they spend fifteen minutes talking about how sad it is that the reform school soloist was high on PCP and killed some people. Puck meets Tina's eye and they both grin, and he actually doesn't want to shoot himself when everyone starts singing that gay Kelly Clarkson song.

When it ends, Mercedes says, "You _know_ we gotta sing that for Mr. Schue when we get back."

"It's too presh for words," Kurt agrees, putting a hand over his heart.

All of a sudden, everyone looks at him, like he's the deciding factor here, and he realizes that he sort of is, because he'd be the one to tell them it was a gay idea and he was having no part of it.

But he shrugs and rubs his hand over his mohawk and looks at Finn, then Rachel, then Tina and Artie and Santana and Brittany and Mike and Matt and Mercedes and Kurt and Quinn.

"Fine, I'll do it," he says, "but I'm not hugging anybody, is that clear?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Finn struggle not to grin.

—

Coach Sylvester drags him into the gym before she leaves for Boca. "Listen, Puckerman. Without me, it's going to be your job to destroy glee. Try not to die while I'm gone, but if you do, try not to get blood on anything that I like."

He lets her kick his ass one last time, because he knows it makes her happy, and salutes when she walks away. He figures, hey. Maybe they'll all get lucky and her plane will crash.

—

In between gathering in the music room and showing Mr. Schue the trophy, Rachel corners him.

"I'm sorry," she says again. "I realize that sometimes I act without thinking of others, which I think could be a result of my being an only child who was often pampered by her fathers, as well as being extremely talented. But I … didn't mean to hurt anyone. I didn't _want_ to hurt anyone. Especially not you and Finn."

Puck sighs. He doesn't reach immediately for the stake he carries around with him, which he thinks is probably a start. But when she steps in close like she's going to kiss him, he steps away. "You were right. This thing isn't going to work. You're evil, and I shouldn't have let you live."

Her breath hitches, but she doesn't move away, which is more trusting than he probably deserves. "But I did," he continues, and puts his lucky stake in her hand. "And now we need you. Finn needs you. So I'm not going to touch you, for now."

He wants to reach out and pull her in and tell her that she's crazy and that the evil thing is kind of a turn on, because apparently he's always liked bitches and she's a whole new level.

But he just touches her hair briefly and then steps away. "But if you're so much as _present_ when Finn gets a _paper cut_, I will come after you so fast you won't even know it until you're dead."

Her eyes are bright and wet, but she smiles at him. "You're a good person, Noah," she tells him. "I'm really glad we're friends."

He watches her walk away until he realizes that he's doing it.

—

Finn won't look at him when they sing, but he stands next to him, and Puck's been his best friend long enough to know that there are certain truths to Finn and one of them is loyalty.

So afterwards, when everyone else is going to their cars and Finn is waiting for his mother, Puck knocks him out and puts him in the bed of his truck. Santana and Brittany ride shotgun and Tina sits with Artie in the back. When Finn wakes up, they're in the graveyard and dark has fallen.

He starts freaking out when Puck puts a blessed cross over his neck. "What the heck?!" Finn yelps, looking around. "Tina? Artie? What's going on?"

Puck takes a deep breath. "First of all, I'm sorry I knocked up your girlfriend," he says, to get it out of the way.

"And secondly … I'm the Vampire Slayer."

(end part 1)


End file.
